SOURCE: Hurth, Elisabeth. “The ‘Uses’ of the ‘Literary’ Jesus: Ernest Rénan's Life of Jesus in New England.” ESQ 38, no. 4 (1992): 315-37.

In the following essay, Hurth argues that although The Life of Jesus inspired much discussion and even imitation in nineteenth-century New England, the work's central position rejecting the divinity of Jesus was usually dismissed.

“There are two ways of writing the Life of Jesus,” the North American Review observed in 1864. “The one is simply to ascertain and arrange the facts of his external history; the other is, then to go on and so interpret and explain those facts as to make it seen and felt what manner of man he was in spirit and purpose.” A “life” of this latter kind seemed to the Review “still … eminently needed.” It was necessary to have “first, … a conviction founded on internal and external evidence that Jesus is the name...